12/08/22 - Ivy House - Old Match Lake

Weight - 175lb 12oz

Catch - 35 Carp, 4 Roach

Weather - Hot (32c) & sunny

Match - Open (10 fished) - 2nd overall

After 2 weeks of no fishing, except for an evening at my club water in Lavington I was looking forward to getting back out on the bank and booked into the late evening/afternoon match.

With 10 anglers we all had plenty of room and I was happy with p10 as it gave me a couple of options. Due to the heat and previous matches, I decided to ignore fishing on the deck as I just suffered with loads of fizzing in the silt and no proper bites.

When I arrived, there were loads of fish on the surface so a mugging rig was set up, plus a small method to fish the end of the island and down the left hand bank. I also set up a paste rig to fish the margins but expected to catch on double corn.

On the all-in and it’s as if the fish know as they soon disappeared. I managed to catch one, but they were proving tricky as there were fewer to target and I didn’t waste too much time.

I soon tried the left margin and caught one carp on paste (kriller & blue ice), but again didn’t stay on it too long as I couldn’t get a clean bite. In the meantime, I had been pinging 6s to the island and down the left-hand bank and picked up the method rod 45mins into the match.

Fishing with sludge boosted micros and a 6mm orange or yellow gofter I was soon catching, mostly small carp, but at least I was putting fish in the net. I spent most of the first half of the match switching between the island and left-hand bank. I did try a pellet rig down the left bank fishing an 8mm pellet and caught 1 carp, but it didn’t feel right and I never picked up the rig again.

At the halfway point I probably had about 50-55lb and was hoping for a few units down my margin. I had already fed a couple of cups of micros and corn down the left-hand margin and 4s down the right margin which were fed by hand.

I did catch a few carp down the right margin on paste, however the left margin was far better. Starting on double corn was a struggle and a switch to paste was far better, by feeding some corn in with the paste. When ever there were too many fish in the swim I switched to the double corn rig, just feeding corn and when it slowed a switch back to the paste rig brought an immediate response leading to a strong end to the match.

By the end I thought I had 140lb and this was the 2^nd time recently that I had grossly underestimated my weight. It could have been more, but I went slightly over in one of my nets.

Felt I fished a much better match than my last couple of visits and it turned into a lovely evening.

1.    177-14 – Carl – p16

2.    175-12 – Ken Rayner – p10

3.    166- 0 – Mark Poppleton – p8

4.    155- 0 – Andy Lloyd – p14